Sub-prime lending drove the U.S. housing bubble from 1998 until its collapse beginning in 2007. Since that time, real estate prices have fallen by 35% across the United States. Sub-prime was first hailed for its expansion of the number of people who could qualify for a mortgage. But many of those borrowers fudged on their income and net worth levels in order to borrow more than their true incomes would allow them to repay. Since the bubble burst and many sub-prime borrowers defaulted, the U.S. government has provided bank bail-outs deficit spending stimulus that will double the national debt from $9 trillion in 2007 to $18 trillion next year. Continue reading→

Great Park Accepts $1 Million Grant from U.S. Department of Energy for Solar Decathlon 2013 and XPO

XPO to Feature Multi-Day Clean+Renewable+Efficient Energy Exposition

IRVINE – At their meeting on May 17, 2012, The Orange County Great Park Corporation Board approved an agreement with the United States Department of Energy that provides a $1 million grant to host the Solar Decathlon 2013 at the Great Park. The agreement establishes a two-phase planning and implementation process that also includes the staging of the first ever multi-day exposition set for October 3-13, 2013, dubbed the XPO: Clean+Renewable+Efficient Energy Exposition. Continue reading→

If there was an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and SciencesAward for the best acting performance by a CEO, Jamie Dimon of J.P. Morgan Bank would surely win the Oscar for his dismissal of a $2 billion off-shore derivative loss as “a complete tempest in a teapot.” Dimon tried to use all his theatrical skills to distract the American public from discovering the U.S. Federal Reserve’s policy of loaning money to banks at zero-interest-rates has made derivative trading wildly profitable, but made lending to American businesses less profitable. As fallout from the J.P. Morgan fiasco exposes the bloated derivative activities of major banks, the Federal Reserve will be forced to terminate the zero interest rate policy and let rates rise to retard bank speculative actions. Higher interest rates will stimulate banks to make more commercial and industrial loans, resulting in higher U.S. economic growth. Continue reading→

Four years ago, Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and the ultra-liberal Roosevelt Institute, where he serves as Senior Fellow, enthusiastically heralded the Presidential election of Barack Obama as the beginning of at least a decade of continuous expansion of government intervention into the American economy. Stiglitz trumpeted the capture of the Executive and Legislative branches of the United States government by the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party for the first time since the 1970’s, as public’s endorsement of new social initiatives that would rival the Great Society’s Medicare, Medicaid and education funding that began with the 1964 election of President Lyndon Johnson and continued through 1980 under Nixon, Ford and Carter. But it has come as a severe shock to Stiglitz and the Roosevelt Institute that voters have already turned against the values of the days of disco.

President Obama’s election sweep gave him the mandate to grow federal government spending 60% faster than President Johnson, by growing the national debt four times faster: Continue reading→

Sacramento – Senator Tom Harman (R-Huntington Beach) announced he has introduced two resolutions, Senate Joint Resolution 24 and Senate Joint Resolution 25 urging Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, and Congress to preserve two military bases located in Orange County. The Naval Weapons Station, located in Seal Beach, and the Los Alamitos Joint Forces Training Base have been targeted for closure during the newly proposed rounds of defense spending cuts and base closures. Continue reading→